Cast of Characters

I am a writer who just happens to love family trees. As the self proclaimed Family Historian and Writer in Residence at my house, I blog to others about family history writing. When I first began this journey, everyone was bored silly with my "family tree stuff." Once I started writing the stories down, everyone willingly joined in. Now the whole family pretty much participates! Imagine that ! Follow along, and you can gain a little family appreciation for all your hard nosed genealogical research while learning a little something about the craft of writing too.

Category: Traditions

Aunt Lolly wrote on the back of her own photo the date it was taken and “Aint I a sight”

Mom recently had a birthday. I don’t think I am ready to admit which one, but let’s say that I’ve done enough of them to hope I still have a certain percentage left! I am also old enough to recall getting greeting cards in the mailbox from a generation or two older than my own grandparents. I wish I still had some of these treasures, but I don’t.

Year after year, I recall getting a card from a mystery aunt. I do not recall ever seeing the woman alive. She was the aunt of my great grandmother if you can fathom that! I also don’t think that she ever left her own house at any point during her golden years. Maybe she couldn’t fit through the door? I don’t know. I remember my uncles and dad joking that she’d have to be buried in a piano crate.

Sometimes they would talk about it and laugh and someone would start up a rousing riff of “Fatty Fatty Two by Four” on Gramcracker’s old upright piano. Everyone would sing along. I liked the song. It was naughty…especially the part: “couldn’t fit through the bathroom door–so she pee peed on the floor– poor old Fatty Two by Four!”

I never felt bad about singing along when I was a kid. No one seemed to notice that I joined in on the “bathroom talk.” They were too busy laughing and singing themselves! And I also liked it because they seemed to be crooning happily about this mystery aunt who always sent me empty birthday cards. Never a gift–always a card, with odd old lady sayings on them. “Happy Birthday, and Many Joyous Returns.” No $5. Signed in swirling old lady script (which I have inherited by the way) “With Fondness, Aunt Lolly.”

As a child I was dragged to more than my healthy share of funerals, I’m sure. But since I do not ever recall going to one with a piano case front and center, I’m pretty sure I missed Aunt Lolly’s. Maybe I had tonsillitis or something when she died. I got out of a lot of stuff because of my tonsils. They were pretty much terminally ill.

So, with that off my chest…yes, I’m getting old and I count my unappreciative, non-sympathetic attitude toward Aunt Lolly and her agoraphobia/obesity woes as things to repent for. Let’s move forward with the birthday thing shall we?

I am asking you all to talk about, write down, and reflect on the day and circumstances of your birth.

Wow, did we just step in a little bit of something there? If you are very fortunate, you may now have, or perhaps have had in the past access to an “unfiltered” elder. You know, someone with loose lips and one foot in the grave. I’m telling you now, suck up to these people and then hold on! They are golden if you want the real truth on a whole lot of stuff. Prepare to have your hair curled!

In my own family, my dad has a rather compulsive obsession (see how I skated around that one…I used the words slightly out of their standard order) with calling me or visiting each year specifically on my birthday.He needs to tell me the story of the day I was born. Now, my mom joins in with her part of course, but mostly, this is the territory of my dad. Since they are both past 80 now, when Pop called this year to tell me the story once again, I wrote down the phrases that he uses doggedly year after year to describe that day. Here are some excerpts:

December 11th it started snowing– That morning your mom said she thought she was having some pain– I put the chains on the tires– It was our 57 Chevy–We drove out the old highway–Doc said “get her here”– The snow was “Ass deep to a 10 foot Indian”– You were born 13 minutes before Midnight on the 12th– Mom said she didn’t want any kid born on the 13th.

I’ll fill in the details some day in my Memoir. The point is, I have heard those exact words year after year in the telling and retelling of my birth. I don’t want to forget them, the words. I know the story, but now, the exact words are what I need to get down on paper, for my OCD dad and for me– a chip off the old block–and for my own kids on down to and including Dollbaby.

Of course I have taken to doing the same for my kids now. Boring them each year over their festive dinner and cake…talking about the way they came into the world. One was a late fall baby, two were born in the summer time. I haven’t found colorful words to cling to and repeat…no 10′ Indians or tire chains. But some day, they might be glad that they can tell the stories to their own families. Perhaps they’ll sing naughty piano songs about their crazy grandmother? Who knows.

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We are now on day 16 of Christmas Break. The thrill is gone. Dollbaby has become consistantly surly…so we’re heading to McDonald’s for Drive-Thru breakfast

Another Christmas has passed and a fresh new calendar is opened. Now, after the stockings have been sacked, the wrapping is in shreds and all the ribbons lie crumpled in wait for the vacuum’s new belt…life will go back to something a bit like normal. I would be lying if I said I miss the frenzy once it passes.

In the coming days I’m sure tiredness will sink in. Hopefully a dash of self satisfaction for another year of “festivities well hosted” will settle over me too. I’ll be looking for a way to kick off the year with some memory invoking prose. I’ve been experimenting lately with something a little different.

Poetry as Memoir

My poet friend Marjie Gates Giffin does this with aplomb and I really admire the results. Mom’s own journey into this emerging genre, however, has come in fits and starts of childish rhymes and goofy lyricism. But, I do keep trying. And though I won’t “set it free out it into the world” any time soon, I enjoy the fun and challenge. It stretches me creatively and is a beautiful Art Form for something I do as work each day.

If you would like to try this shorter, more distilled type of family story telling, I encourage you to take a look at Marion Roach Smith‘s lovely post about doing just this. She is the author of The Memoir Project, another must-read for those who write these crazy stories with love!

Meanwhile, here is a selection from Marjie. I dare you to read it and then NOT see the quivering tower of fluffy green deliciousness she describes! I love this poem because…

1. It’s really good

2. I am not aware that it’s poetry while I’m reading it (no brain-pain involved)

3. The picture fits smoothly into my head with comfort and ease. I understand it and see the scene and hover near it as the quick story unfolds.

4. Enjoy~

Green Salad

>*<

When I was small,

Grandma’s Christmas salad

looked green and spongy

and, when dipped by finger,

tastedtangy sweet.

It posed like a centerpiece

in a big crystal bowl

bedecked on top

with red maraschino cherries

and sprigs of holly.

Little delights were hidden

under its soft, lime folds:

tart bits of pineapple,

clumps of cottage cheese,

and best of all,

rich swirls of whipping cream.

Simply dubbed Green Salad,

the smooth and frothyJello stuff

was as much decoration

as it was holiday treat.

With her flair for the dramatic,

Grandma bestowed it upon us

year after year after year.

With none of the flourish,

but mindful of my role,

I, too, bring forth Green Salad

for my own festive

Christmas buffets.

Some of my family disdain it;

others dish more than their share.

But without it –

without Green Salad on my table,

I couldn’t have Grandma –

And delicious memories – there.

>*<

Marjie G. Giffin is a delightful poet and author of several local Indiana history books. Ripe with info and insights for Genealogy and Family History writers with stories steeped in the Old Guard and lowly working class neighborhoods of Indianapolis they are a prize for your bookshelf. Check out her listings on my own Bookshelf page.

So after sucking up the ribbon and smelling the unmistakable stench of a burnt vacuum cleaner belt…sit quietly for a moment. Relax. Then while basking in that pool of calm, see if you can pen something simple and perfect. Try your hand at poetry to sum up a moment of your family gathering.

Tradition passing down the generational stair-steps is the lovely theme here. Perhaps yours will be lovely too! And that, as always, means “Maybe someone should write that down…”

This was originally posted on my other blog around Thanksgiving in 2012 as my son’s team was getting ready to head for the State Championship Football Game (which…spoiler alert….They Won!).

I am still Nano-ing my brain into a mush-state. I think I now officially have the “corporal tunnels” all the way up through my elbows, and on searing deeply into my shoulders. I believe the pains will eventually converge at the center point of my poorly postured, hunched over the lap-top back :). Next week will be (still November) and surprisingly also posts about food…..

But we all seem to be on a bit of a hungry kick, and I did owe a family story this week…so here goes

It’ll make you Famous!

I am officially elbow deep in Thanksgiving Food Prep. Yes, of course everyone comes to our house for the big Dinner Wing Ding. This honor falls upon Mom because I am directly descended from two “Large Food” women. Both of my GreatGrandmothers were production cookers in their own right. Grandma Fern cooked up huge batches of all sorts of stuff, put it on a wagon with the big harvest table, hitched the mules and drove it out to the fields for the “help” each day at “dinner.”

Diminutive Granny Kate (seen above) was a tiny women who was said to be so tough that she could “whip her weight in wild cats.” I would have never questioned that. She ran both a restaurant with a full serve tavern, and a huge traveling food concession on the summer fair and carnival circuit. Grandpa couldn’t help much, he was busy running his Monkey Circus and other side show attractions.

As I slog my way thru a couple gallons of pumpkin pie filling, a mountain of potatoes to get peeled and a stupid Turkey that still isn’t thawed, I thought it would only be right to share a favorite recipe of mine. It’s called Finger Pie (or Sugar Cream pie as it is known formally as the one and only Official Pie of Indiana). Everyone loves this stuff. It’s an easy, yet archaic recipe that you seldom see home made these days. Why? Because it will make you famous if you can eat more than one slice in a sitting and not trigger a cardiac event of some sort.

Being named after the wild cat fighter, I like it because it always kicks the @#$ of all the fancy desserts the in-laws bring over. I’ve even taught my granddaughter so she can wear my food mantel some day.

Here’s finger pie (pay attention Darlene’s daughter-in-law!)

Into a pre-made pie crust (get the Pillsbury, no one is looking) pour in a cup and a half of white sugar. Sounds good already!

Add and gently fluff together to stir (with your fingers…derrr!) 3 Tablespoons of all purpose flour.

Now for the fun. Add a cup and a half of heavy cream. Yep, I said it… the real stuff! Slowly WITH YOUR FINGERS stir the cream and the sugar/flour mixture until the sugar no longer feels gritty. You really do have to do it with your fingers. Too much stirring will cause the cream to “whip”….word of the day… and your pie will be awful. Also, don’t get in a hurry and make a mess, it’ll look bad.

Sprinkle a little Nutmeg over the top and carefully put into the oven (350…you knew that). Bake the pie for about an hour. It looks like a science experiment. The pie actually bubbles and gurgles while you bake it. Carefully remove it from the oven. At this point it will still be pretty “sloshy” and hotter than you know what. The top should have some caramely- brown color evenly across it. Cool completely before cutting.

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Who by this time has NOT seen the internet meme that doles out the list of what we kiddos of a certain vintage were able to “survive.” Stuff like playing outdoors until the streetlamps came on, cars without seat belts, saccharin laced Tab cola, red dye #5, and a plethora of other dangers, poisonous weaponry passed off as toys, and ways our mothers laid us down for naps.

I’ve come to task you with a challenge– to take a trip headlong down memory lane. This is one of those projects you can use either way. It can be left behind as a love-note to future family historians generations in advance, or you can do some digging and write about an ancestor’s point of view.

Today, tell your blank page about your childhood, or that of a loved one who also survived it. By childhood, I mean the insignificant daily doings that went on, that in retrospect were so damming that they could be titled “it’s a wonder the human race exists at all now.” Take a walk through your early years and recall the heady smell and creamy mouth-feel of a new jar of school paste. Were you the kid who ate the paste, or the one who sat watching someone else who ate it like it food of the gods?

I am up to my elbows in this Nanowrimo self-induced sickness. As I write this (and it IS SO LOVELY to take a break from fantasy and fiction) I have clocked just over 25,000 words so far. I have passed the half-way point for word counts, goals and calendar days survived under the heading of November 2014! Woot Woot! I just might make it after all. This is a bit like our writing topic for today–surviving in spite of all the little real or fretted snares lying about trying to kill us…

Here’s an excerpt from the Mom’s Book of Childhood I will share with you as and example. Maybe next month when my brain re-solidifies, I will post a Nano sample page for anyone who is interested in taking a peek behind the curtain in front of the alter of the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz…no wait…that was the movie I watched with Doll-baby yesterday. Boy, my brain is really past its own limitations at this point!When i was about 5, my mom and dad built our house in the country. I loved this time in my life. To save money while the house was being built on a little spot between two bridges over the drainage ditches we called creeks, we moved in with Gramcracker temporarily.

Each day when my dad finished his day job as a house painter working on the Brady Bunch mansions and Tri-Levels that were smothering the woodsy north side of Indy, he zoomed home, picked up my mom and his sandwich and headed out to the country to “work on the house.

“I’m not really sure how he survived it.He left for his job before sun-up in the morning, and then together my parents were rarely back from the country before my grandmother came home from 2nd shift at the Rubber Company around midnight. Being a kid of very few rules, I staid up as late as I wanted, watching old movies and “spook shows” with my great grandmother Kate who I knew as Granny. The highlight of my semi nocturnal existence was Gramcracker’s home coming each night. She always had a little “something” for me in her pocketbook. I had no understanding of money or origination…I just thought that the Rubber Company must have been the most incredible place in the world.

Arriving home, each night Gramcracker grinned, hugged me tight and called me Goldie. Then she would ceremoniously reach into her trademark large handbag and pull out a prize. Never failing to dazzle me with a treat, there was always something in that big purse for ME! Sometimes the prize from the rubber company was a small carton of chocolate milk, or orange juice. They looked just like the ones at the grocery, only these were so amazingly small… made just for kids, midgets, and Munchkins. Sometimes a pair of Dolly Madison coconut snowball cakes was my treat. A Popeye Pez candy dispenser was not out of the realm of possibility, and sometimes my own pack of Twinkies was the prize nestled next to her Zippo and Luckys. Anything available in the vending machines was open game for my nightly gift.

When i look back on this time with modern adult eyes I am appalled that I was left alone in the house basically unattended night after night for 6 or so hours with only my Granny to watch me. She was completely immobile, could barely speak and mostly sat in her chair smiling at me, rocking, and never complaining when I stood between her and Gunsmoke on the television.

I’m not sure what kept me from burning down the house, running out into traffic or choking to death during those hours.

I don’t think this arrangement lasted real long though. After a few months, my mom, pregnant with my brother, became too “big” to help with the “house.” Never mind the lead laced paint fumes, the open stairwell in the floor to the basement, or the 20 mile drive without airbags or safety belts, her tummy and my brother became just too “in the way.”

She started staying home with me and Granny, handing my dad his thermos and sandwich and waving goodbye from the porch as he headed off to Boone county. She headed off to bed of course around 9,

and I watched the spook shows and waited for my Grandma and her pocketbook with Granny…my life went on as usual.

So what moments of childhood can you point to as those survived only via providence of a skilled Guardian Angel? Laugh it up, have a cry, marvel at the terror in the rear-view mirror of life…whatever or however it was…

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This is my favorite photo of my “Pop” in the Army. He was stationed in Japan and couldn’t be home at Christmas with his family. In this picture, you see Grandpa holding up his Army photo. He is proudly including his son in the present opening and merriment of the day, even though he is half a world away.

Today’s post is what I call a “no-brainer.” Here in the US it’s Veteran’s Day. On the 11th day of the 11th month, at the 11th hour, it is our tradition to stop in our tracks, take a moment out of our daily lives and to use that moment giving thanks to the sacrifices of our protectors.

For better or for worse,we are the citizen army who serves the world. I am in awe of all those who step forward and say yes to this call. I admit to my own selfish Mom heart’s reaction to the events of 9/11. Growing up, I had older cousins and uncles and brother-in-laws to be who were serving in Vietnam. As a child I lived in constant fear of nuclear holocausts and mushroom clouds. But war as a state of living was not anything beyond a night terror.

It wasn’t real. It didn’t touch me.

When 9/11 happened, people from around the world were shocked and left reeling. Our parish held an emergency Mass to pray for peace the next day. It seems the spontaneous rainbow so many of us had seen the morning before wasn’t enough. It sprung from a rain-less sky, to assure us of providence, but we were so busy looking to our own patches of heaven for the next plane to drop, we didn’t notice.

At Mass on the morning of the 12th, I found myself bawling in public. Quite selfishly I will admit. All I could see before me were children who I loved, in grades K-8, and I knew from the depths of my sinking heart that the events we were living would cause many of them to say yes to the call to be soldiers, and sailors, warriors…people who were real, who I loved, who could be hurt or worse.

Today, I get it. Then, I didn’t.

I am still worried for the ones who have volunteered. But I know that their career is something they have no desire to say no to. They are truly called. They are made stronger by it, they are broken because of it, and they are completely remade too. Today’s world is not held captive by a violent threat shown in clips on the nightly news in black and white. It is all nearer than that. And somehow, I am less afraid knowing that so many of the children I have been a child with myself, the children who I room-mothered, the children of my family who grew up to be my ancestors all grew and still grow up to be so brave on my behalf.

It’s an admirable, amazing and incomprehensible thing that these people who I know and love step forward to do. They are not faceless characters in nighttime dreams, they are real, and my awe of them is real too.

Take a moment today to write about the Veterans in your life, your family, buried quietly alongside your relatives or perhaps lying unclaimed and lost into eternity on another land’s soil, or back at home in a world they could no-longer feel like they were a part of. Write their story, honor them as persons–not memories or dreams–and do, above all, thank a Vet today ❤

And so it continues…Son’s best friend proudly displaying his new ROTC duds at college.

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Where better to read Riley’s poem Little Orphant Annie than atop his tomb from a bronze book inscribed with the famous last lines

Taking kids to a cemetery for the first time can be a tricky business. I always wanted mine to visit their ancestors and loved ones, and I didn’t want them to be terrified and jumpy while they were there. I’ve always tried to put the emphasis on the grave markers as a way that we honor people, rather than a way to mark where their bodies are now.

Recently, I decided that my 1st grade granddaughter(I like to refer to her as Doll-baby) was old enough to be intro’d to leaf viewing at the graveyard with Grandmama. So, last week over her Fall Break from school, I resurrected (sorry, there are just too many terrible puns to resist on this topic) an old tradition from when her mommy was small. We loaded up the car, the dog, and ourselves and headed to the old city neighborhood surrounding Crown Hill Cemetery.

We passed through the ornate brick and iron entrance gates and drove by the Victorian era mourning station. For what seems like miles, the larger than life (haha) winged angels, obelisks, fancy tombs and little cave-like crypts are lined up in rolling winding rows. They look like randomly placed sculptures set in an outdoor gallery. The bleached white marble seemed to glow against a backdrop of red and gold maples.

Crown Hill is a big place. Covering over 550 acres, and currently just short of a quarter of a million interned, the cemetery has 25 miles of paved roads within it’s gates. With no road signs and so much to look at, it is an easy place to get lost in. To find the way to our destination (the famous “Strawberry Hill”) we follow a white line discreetly painted along one of the of narrow lanes winding through the graveyard.

The hill is the absolute best place I know of in Indianapolis for fall color viewing. It is unofficially the highest point in the city. From here, the view of the downtown skyline and all the rest of the panoramic scenery is breathtaking. And it ls from here that Mom begins her sneaky, slipped-in-before-they-notice-what’s-happening local history lesson. Doll-baby has expected to go trekking with crazy Grandma to see the pretty fall colors at the big city cemetery.

We are really there to soak up a little poetry and culture without getting spooked.

Here, scattered across the landscaped sections lie a US President, several “Veeps” all sorts of Senators and Ambassadors, a bunch of Union Generals, athletes, pillars of industry and society, gangsters (yep, over there that’s where ol’ John Dillenger is),the man who played Uncle Remus in Disney’s movie Song of the South, and even a Gypsy King and some race car drivers. It’s really quite the assortment at rest, eternally planted here together.

James Whitcomb Riley, Booth Tarkington, Kurt Vonnegut and that “Fault in our Stars” kid Augustus Waters are all buried here in our local cemetery (well, not Augustus really, he’s just a fictional character). I, like many of the “old timers” of Central Indiana, often refer to Crown Hill Cemetery merely as “out at 38th Street” and usually call the most swanky and coveted section of Crown Hill “Strawberry Hill.”

True, we are headed up the marked lane to see the city from it’s highest point, but we are also going to visit and leave a little gift for Mr Riley. It’s a tradition whenever you scale Strawberry Hill. And though I am not creeped out by graves and burial grounds, I sure would never want to get that way by snubbing tradition!

Famous for his poem about goblins who would come and get misbehaving kids,Little Orphant Annie was a poem often read to children around Halloween– or bedtime when ill behavior warranted.

Crowning Strawberry Hill, James Whitcomb Riley’s tomb has the best spot available out of every inch available in all of the massive cemetery.

“Annie” was a real girlwho worked as a housekeeper and sort of nanny to the Riley children. She is pictured here in this photo from 1885. When her father went off to fight in the Civil War, her mother had already been dead for many years. When he was killed in action, little Annie was orphaned (or “orphant” in Hoosier talk). Her name in real life was actually Mary Alice, and the poem written about her was to be titled “Little Orphant Allie” but it was misread during typesetting and became famous instead as “Annie.”

Amazingly enough, Mary Alice wasn’t aware she was the inspiration for “Annie” for several years, or that James (or Jim as she knew him) had spent many years searching for her. He ran numerous ads in Indiana newspapers trying to find her and reconnect. In about 1915, just before his death, “Annie’s” daughter happened upon one of the advertisements and contacted him. You can read about it in Mary Allice’s obituary.

If you are unfamiliar, you can click on the poem’s title above if you’d like experience the sort of dark humor Mom was raised with. Those who are not at least partially fluent in “Hoosier” as a language will probably have a pretty tough time understanding the written words. So, for your convenience, enjoyment, and usage if you ever find yourself in need of a way to snap those pesky grandchildren in line…here’s an actual recording of Mr Riley, the old coot himself, reciting “Little Orphant Annie” around 1912.

The recording is also a bit tough to understand between the accent and the poet’s age when the recording was made, and likely his general condition. It seems that JW was an enthusiastic imbiber. So maybe he sounds a little slurry because he was a little sloshed?

I do recall times in my own childhood when by chance or by well planned attack, our Grandparents would somehow end up with all 9 of us grandchildren for the weekend. Occasionally things got a bit rowdy. I have flashbacks to scenes of our Grandpa (ol George the Methodist aka “The Dog Nab”) loudly reciting the lines of the Goblin poem in our direction. Then he would shew all of us, still white faced and breathless up the terrifying narrow stairway to our beds. In present times, this would probably be considered emotional abuse enough. However, the real abuse started when the snarling, howling gasps and whistling grunts started to waft up the steep stairwell as he slept denture-less and his snores crawled up from the master bedroom below us.

Sweet Jesus! We were all sure goblins and werewolves roamed those hallways at night!

We ended up having a wonderful and educational day. We gathered loose change up from the car and participated in the Riley Tomb tradition. Doll-baby thought that was really cool. Her class was always collecting soda tabs for “Riley.”

The tradition? Well it seems that although Mr Riley was widely known, well published and dearly loved by children and adults alike, he died completely broke. When the children of the city heard that their beloved spooky poem writing favorite was buried without a marker, they began coin drives until one could be purchased. Funds poured in from around the world and in 1922 the cornerstone was laid on the Riley Hospital for Children, in no small part funded by the coin drives of his young fans. Today, the Riley hospital is a beacon of hope for the sickest children from around the nation. And that’s why the tradition of leaving coins on his tomb lives on today, a hundred years after his passing. The grounds crew gather the money each day and deposit it into the Riley Children’s Fund.